Landscape Gardening 



15. Originality. — Although everything approaching to 

 eccentricity has been fully deprecated in a former page, a few 

 lines may now be devoted to advocating originality as a 

 principle to be aimed at in a garden. The scenes of nature 

 are continually sought, because, while they are "ever charm- 

 ing," they are likewise "ever new." And a garden should 

 be made to combine some little freshness, — something that 

 will distinguish it from other gardens. Departure from rule 

 is not, it will readily be believed, the kind of originality to be 

 desired. It is rather such as results from newness of arrange- 

 ment, of combinations,' of expression, and character. It is 

 rare, indeed, that two places will have the same shape, soil, 

 aspect, surface, and accompaniments, and every peculiarity 

 that is not really bad should be seized upon, and worked into 

 some kind of novelty. 



Originality is antagonistic to all sorts of tameness. Even 

 a slight deviation from established laws will often be pref- 

 erable to their dull and expressionless embodiment, though 

 such a course cannot at all be allowed to be necessary. That 

 which is commonplace, — which is the exact counterpart 

 of what everybody else has, — never leaves any impression 

 upon the observer's mind nor wins him back to a second 

 inspection. 



Freshness of aspect may be the result of any one particular 

 circumstance or a combination of them. The treatment of 

 the foreground of a place may produce it, by presenting the 

 trees and shrubs brought up nearer to the house than usual 

 (but not so as to darken or make it damp), narrowing the 

 lawn very much at that point, and letting it gradually 

 expand towards the boundary, so that the house will appear, 

 from a distance, to be a species of nest in the midst of a 

 plantation, though not actually so. The boundary lines, 

 again, may be treated so as to get the greatest possible 



